Old player considering returning to L2 and some questions

hello everyone , im old lineage 2 player and this game brings a lot of nostalgia to me , to this day everytime i play any mmorpgs i remember how different and interesting lineage2 pvp was with pk and pvp system (flag) , olympiad , heroes etc. after trying multiple games from wow to most recently aion i couldnt get hooked to any of them , well except wow , i played it for about 3-4 years , but then i noticed that there is completely no thrill at end game for pvpers so i just quit , tried aion after that and i cant find the class i like there , but anyways thats a bit too much off topic .
i have few questions for the current players. keep in mind that i quit lineage2 after hellbound , i played some gracia too but the best days of lineage 2 for me were interlude and hellbound .

1.are there enough people still playing this game ? i remember at the time i quit , the game was starting to die , i cant remember the exact reasons , but many servers were being merged , many dead servers and stuff like that .
2.how exactly does the 4th class work ? i know there are race differences , for example human tyrr warrior and orc tyrr warrior would have different racial skill , but is that it ? are there no difference to what weapons each race use and stuff like that ? is it only the racial skills and the appearance of the character ?
3.considering 4th class was brought to the game , what is the situation of 3rd class aspect ? one of the few things that kept me in this game for a pretty long period of time (4 or 5 years on and off) was grand khavatari class , i loved everything about it , from how it looks , to skills and the weapon it uses , so what i wanna ask is there any difference between tyrr warrior who was grand khavatari and lets say dreadnaught tyrr warrior or is it again only racials and the looks of the character ? i also wanna ask if its useful for a tyrr warrior to use fists ? (the looks of my character are big part of my game , so yeah , using fists instead of lets say polearm is a huge thing for me)
4.how does olympiad or to be more precise heroes work now when you have 4th class ? do you still have lets say gk , titan , duelist heroes or its now it only counts these new classes which would mean that you only have 8 heroes per server right ? that would be weird .
5.what is the state of olympiad in terms of balance ? i remember when i quit at the early gracia many people were crying about some classes being op and some being **** , i also remember my beloved gk became really easy to play, thats why i quit in the first place , to me , i picked gk when i started back in late c3 because it was considered **** and later it was considered "pretty hard class" if you can call any class hard in l2. so how it is now ? are the classes hard to play ? are they balanced ?

thats all for now , hope you guys dont mind this wall of text , i hope for fast answers as im eager to return if its worth it .

lineage is the same game it was except they removed all the fun from it . examples:
-over-enchanting was an amazing way to have fun in lineage , now it's almost imposible to get a weapon above +10
-pvp's aren't what they used to be , in the old days pvp's were quite fast and thrilling especially without 100% res, now a pvp could go even for one hour with very few people dieing . now you fight until you get bored and pr .
-olympiad is the same if you have max skills and all the epic jewels on you , you can beat everyone. if not you 'd better have a tank/summoner/healer if you want to win some matches without amazing gear.

fake obsess - to read it from some one like u its realy funny.
where did u get all thet info?-from ncsoft/ruoff? or mb u have ur own character and tryed it all?
lineage is lineage -some times good /some times not =but ppl still play on it for far more reasons then u point here (and yes ur not the 1 who should wright here obout pvp/oly -get ur own char from start 1st ).

how about you all actually answer his questions and not start another forum war against eachother?

@prevas - things have changed alot since you last played and are due to change again with the next updates. there are still alot of players who enjoy the game, we still get new players joining and alot of "old" players are looking forward to the changes in the next updates as it seems they will revert some elements back such as the amount of classes. at the moment (for your olympiad question) it is that there are only 8 hero's as there are only 8 4th classes, but in next updates they will be reverting back to more classes meaning there will be more diversity again and more hero's.

yesterday my old friend from real life who was playing with me 2-3 years l2 logged to core server to check some things before openning polish server. when i asked him "why dont stay on international server w/o small polish kids playing on national server" he said: "but isnt core already 1 year server without "fresh blood""?

after 2 hours of doing some quests, checking some general lowbie spots he said that it isnt so empty at all and he will reconsider choosing server again with his friend.

so seems like it is not bad and l2 is l2. you wont find any better mmo for longer than 1-2 months and a lot of things from "old times" will back in livindor update. also many of them already have been changed for better like war system, castle siege system etc.

last 2 replies are great , thanks to both of you , cause i lost the faith in this community after seeing first replies .
when is this next big update coming ? is there an exact date ? any patch notes i can look up to see whats going to be changed ? i might really consider playing this game again when this update you are talking about hits , if it brings more classes .

last 2 replies are great , thanks to both of you , cause i lost the faith in this community after seeing first replies .
when is this next big update coming ? is there an exact date ? any patch notes i can look up to see whats going to be changed ? i might really consider playing this game again when this update you are talking about hits , if it brings more classes .

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you are welcome. full patch notes are in translation and will be released as soon as possible, we do not have the exact date for release 100% confirmed yet but we will let everyone know as soon as we have it, dates of course are subject to change depending on any major bugs being found etc which is why we can not always give an exact date too far ahead of release. and yes, i think many of us are awaiting the 34 classes coming back with lindvior